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THE VACANT CHAIR AT 

THE COUNCIL TABLE 

OF THE WORLD 

By IVY L. LEE 



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THE VACANT CHAIR AT 

THE COUNCIL TABLE 

OF THE WORLD 

Ivy L. Lee 



REMARKS BEFORE THE PHILADELPHIA 

CHAPTER, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF 

BANKING, AT THE BELLEVUE-STRAT- 

FORD HOTEL, PHILADELPHIA, 

SEPTEMBER 20, IQ22 









fcy Transfer 

APR 7 1923 




THE VACANT CHAIR AT THE COUNCIL 
TABLE OF THE WORLD 

DURING each of the past four years it 
has been my privilege to spend a month 
or more in Europe. Those visits af- 
forded unusual opportunities for discussion 
with cabinet officers of European governments, 
bankers, economists and others possessed of 
intimate knowledge of conditions. 

In previous years one found it possible to get 
fairly definite ideas as to the likely course of 
events in the months immediately ensuing. 
This summer, however, the situation was mud- 
dled, complicated and obscure beyond all pre- 
cedent. But out of all the chaos and contra- 
diction there stood one supreme and baffling 
fact: 

In the council room of the world, today the 
most important chair is vacant! 



The French and the English will call a peace 
conference to settle or attempt to settle the 
questions arising out of the conflict in Turkey. 
Eight nations are to be invited to that confer- 
ence, but in looking over the list one fails to find 
the name of the United States. 



I 



WHY SHOULD AMERICA MIX IN THE 
AFFAIRS OF EUROPE? 

You may say, What have we to do with Turkish 
trouble? And why should we be there? Why 
mix in the quarrels of Europe? 

I happened this afternoon to be talking from 
New York over the telephone with one of the 
cabinet ministers of Canada in Ottawa, and he 
told me that the Prime Minister of Canada had 
been recalled from his vacation to Ottawa to 
consider Canada's relation to this very event. 
Now if Canada has some relationship to this 
affair, is it not possible that we have some in- 
terest in what is settled around the council table 
at which those eight nations shall sit? 

OUR INTEREST IN THE MEETINGS 
OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

At Geneva, the Council of the League of 
Nations has been in session — all the great na- 
tions of the world assembled to consider matters 
of moment to the world. The United States is 
not there. And yet I see that at the meeting 
today there was presented to the League of 
Nations, as one of the important topics of dis- 
cussion, the dispute between Bolivia and Chile! 

Is that of any interest to us? And is there not 
good reason for us to be sitting around a table 
where the Monroe doctrine is so much involved? 



4- 



OUR INTEREST IN PREVENTING 
THE COLLAPSE OF GERMANY 

Another item in the current news: Germany 
is planning to run her printing presses overtime 
in an effort to grind out seven and a half billion 
marks of paper money per week, the previous 
efforts having resulted in inability to supply the 
demand. The government has engaged the 
printing presses not alone of Berlin but other 
places throughout Germany, in an effort to 
satisfy the demand for paper money in the 
mad orgy of inflation. 

Germany's financial and industrial fabric is 
tottering toward its ruin. You will hear people 
say there is prosperity in Germany, but it is the 
prosperity of a drunken man sitting up all night 
spending in riotous living the last cent of money 
he can beg, borrow or steal. 

And the whole problem of German prosperity 
involves the prosperity of our own people. It 
would be impossible for the people of the United 
States to escape the results of a German debacle. 
When that problem is being discussed by the 
nations of the world, as it is being considered 
each day by the Reparations Commission, every 
consideration of pride, self-interest and duty 
demands that we be there. 

Germany has twenty million more people than 
she can feed out of her agricultural production. 
She must feed those people by importing food 
from abroad. In order to pay for that food, she 
must export more than she imports, over and 
above, of course, anything she pays toward rep- 



arations or indemnities.* And one of the 
reasons why a great many farm products of 
this country today are selling at so low a price 
is that Germany, among other nations, cannot 
afford to buy them. The internal purchasing 
power of the mark is so much greater than its 
external purchasing power that Germany cannot 
finance her normal pre-war purchases in foreign 
countries. 

OUR INTEREST IN MARKETING 
OUR FARM PRODUCTS 

On the obverse side of the picture, I am told 
that one of the largest provinces in Canada 
is considering seriously the declaration of a 
moratorium in favor of the farmers. Canada, 
with the greatest wheat crop in her history, 
finds farmers on the verge of bankruptcy, 
Europe, and Germany in particular, with a re- 
duced wheat crop, unable to raise enough for 
ordinary purposes, finds it so difficult to buy 
the wheat that the farmer in Manitoba and 
Saskatchewan raises, and the farmer in the west- 
ern part of the United States as well, that Canada 
is considering a moratorium in favor of her 
farmers. Meanwhile, wheat on the Chicago 
Board of Trade within a week sold at less than 
a dollar a bushel, which means very substantially 
less than a dollar to the farmer in Minnesota 
and Canada — less indeed than it costs to pro- 
duce the wheat. Isn't that condition of affairs of 
some importance to the farmers — and to the whole 
people of America? 



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OUR INTEREST IN HELPING 
AUSTRIA TO HER FEET 

Another item in the news is that Austria is 
tottering still nearer the brink of complete dis- 
organization. I did not get to Austria this 
summer. But I had reserved a hotel room which 
I expected to use. When I found I could not go, 
I asked the management of the hotel to send me 
a bill for the room. The cost of the room for 
three days was 750,000 kronen. Before the war 
that would have been $150,000. I bought a 
check for the amount in dollars in Paris, and 
750,000 kronen were $14.50! It is absolutely 
impossible for us in the midst of prosperity and 
plenty that surround us on every side, to have 
any conception of the demoralization and dis- 
tress in Austria. 

Here is a country which before the war num- 
bered some thirty-five or forty millions of people. 
Today they are cut down to six millions. And 
of the six million people now citizens or subjects 
of Austria, a very large percentage are employed 
by the government — the same number of 
people as were employed by the government 
when the empire numbered thirty-five million 
people. Why, you may properly ask, does 
not the government discharge most of these 
people? No government could discharge these 
people and keep in power. It is a vicious circle 
— the people that have the power to throw the 
government out force the government to keep 
them in. Statesmen of Austria have said, and 
no Allied investigator, however prejudiced 



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against the old Austria or the old Germany, has 
questioned the fact, that Austria cannot put 
her finances on a stable basis without the power 
of a foreign government behind her, that no 
government solely Austrian could live one day 
which would attempt to do the things which 
would result in adjusting the budget of Austria 
so that its income and its expenditures were 
equal. 

And yet the inability of Austria to settle these 
problems means that Austria cannot buy the 
goods we would like to sell her; it means that if 
she cannot buy the goods we would like to sell 
her, she cannot buy the goods of those who have 
perhaps more of the things she wants and who are 
thus in turn unable to buy the things which we 
would like to sell them. This is the very prob- 
lem the League of Nations is trying to solve. 
It is a problem that seriously concerns the 
United States — but we are not there! 

HOW EUROPE 

VIEWS AMERICA TODAY 

No American can go to Europe today and 
feel the pride in himself and his country's posi- 
tion that he did three and four years ago. Four 
years ago, three years ago, the peoples of Europe 
looked upon us as the most idealistic, unselfish, 
and generous people in the world. Today they 
don't dare say, even among themselves, what they 
think — not so much because they don't think 
it, but because they realize so completely their 



dependence upon us that they don't dare let 
themselves contemplate the result if sooner or 
later we do not live up to what they really be- 
lieve is in us. 

We are vital to the very safety of civilization, 
and if we fail, civilization fails! The world 
knows we will not fail, but we are losing pre- 
cious time. 



II 



THE CURSE OF THE TREATY OF 
VERSAILLES 

When the people who framed the Peace 
Treaty at Versailles signed their names to that 
document, they left a curse upon Europe and a 
curse upon the United States, a curse upon the 
world, which it will take a great many years to 
overcome. They left Europe and the world 
saddled with economic problems that are ab- 
solutely insoluble. 

Europe's difficulty — the world's difficulty — has 
been, not so much to recover from the war, but 
to adjust itself to the terms of the peace. 

The reparations and indemnity were foisted 
upon Germany, as you and I know, without 
any regard whatever for Germany's ability 
to pay. I am no more an apologist of Germany 
than anyone else, but I am sure that 
now, three years after the event, we can agree 
to the proposition that the Peace Treaty at 



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Versailles was framed not in an atmosphere of 
calm, dispassionate consideration of Germany's 
ability to pay, but in an atmosphere of attempt 
to satisfy politics in various countries at home 
as to what Germany ought to pay. 

You know the campaign that Mr. Lloyd 
George waged in England just before the Treaty 
of Versailles. You know that even in our own 
country, while we were not so much excited 
about the amount of indemnity to be assessed 
against Germany, the proceedings of the latter 
part of the Peace Conference in Paris and Ver- 
sailles were surrounded in this country by an 
amount of political animus which made calm 
consideration of the result absolutely impos- 
sible. And the supreme difficulty of the moment 
is that we in this country even now cannot con- 
sider this matter free of political prejudices. 

The disease that the Treaty of Versailles 
foisted upon the world grew out of this fact, 
that in the framing of that treaty too much con- 
sideration was given to political boundaries, to 
questions of self-determination and racial am- 
bition, to an effort to get peoples established 
with sovereignty over them in accord with their 
national traditions and their national aspira- 
tions. But no consideration, or little if any, was 
given to the fact that the world is today pro- 
foundly an economic unit, and that no part of 
the world can do business without reference to 
its relations to the other part. 



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EXCESSIVE NATIONALISM 
A WORLD DISEASE 

The disease of the world today is exces- 
sive nationalism — national selfishness and ego- 
ism, and indifference to the welfare — often even 
the rights — of others. 

Now what is the result of that? The result 
is that through this failure to take care of the 
economic machine, this failure to see to it that 
men had an opportunity to earn their daily 
bread in that glorious world that was to grow 
out of self-determination, there was created a 
situation which placed one very large part of 
the world in a position where it was absolutely 
unable to buy the products it must have if it 
was to live. 

The Treaty of Versailles gratified racial and 
nationalistic ambitions, but destroyed the 
foundations of daily life. 

FRANCE — AND HER 
DIFFICULT POSITION 

France is in a peculiar position. The French 
Government, as a government, is bankrupt, un- 
less it is possible to obtain from Germany ade- 
quate reparation. Now everybody who carefully 
considers the question knows that it is impossible 
to obtain adequate reparations from Germany, 
and that being the case, France as a government 
is bankrupt. The French people have still tremen- 
dous resources within themselves. But as a 
Government, France is bankrupt. Yet France has 



11 



been pursuing a policy toward Germany which 
makes it impossible for Germany to pay much, 
if anything, a policy which has upset the whole 
of Europe and which has created immense irri- 
tation in the United States. France is apparently 
selfish and chauvinistic to the extreme — and one 
of the reasons is we are not there doing our part 
to help solve the vast problem of which France's 
difficulty is a mere part. 

France's need 
for security 

Frankly, if I were in France's place, I would 
do precisely what France is doing. Consider 
the case. Suppose that we here in Philadelphia 
had as near to us as Pittsburgh the capital of a 
country eager at a moment's notice to fly at our 
throats. Suppose that country of which Pitts- 
burgh was the capital had twenty million more 
people than we had — vigorous, virile, fighting 
people. Suppose that people had fought us 
twice, invaded our territory and almost ap- 
proached Philadelphia itself, had even been able 
to reach Philadelphia with its flying machines 
and its long distance guns. What would be our 
attitude toward that country? Would we not 
say, "What care we for money? What care we 
for national solvency? What care we for any 
consideration in the world except the security 
of our homes and our land?" We would resolve, 
"Until we can have security against our sons 
being dragged from our homes, against our land 



12 



being invaded and devastated again, we are not 
going to tolerate any steps whatever which will 
make that enemy strong again." 

THE CHRONIC 
DISEASE OF EUROPE 

As I say, if I were in France's place, I would 
take exactly her position. And yet, it is illogical 
and unwise in a world sense. It absolutely fails 
to take unselfish account of the fact that until 
Germany becomes prosperous again, the world 
cannot become prosperous. It fails to take 
account of the fact that so long as France main- 
tains that attitude there can be no peace in 
Europe and no peace in the world. These 
sporadic outbursts that you have seen now in 
Turkey, then in Poland, and at other times in 
different parts of Europe, are mere boils on the 
body. They disclose the disease that is within. 
And you are going to see these outbursts of 
nationalistic bad temper in Europe and different 
parts of the world just so long as there is no 
peace in men's hearts — and there will be no 
peace in Europe until problems like that be- 
tween France and Germany are settled. 

FRANCE NEEDS ASSURANCE OF 
PROTECTION FROM AGGRESSION 

Now, how can they be settled? You cannot 
expect France to take a reasonable attitude 
toward Germany, and that means a reasonable 
attitude toward England and toward the rest of 



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the world, until France has some assurance that 
she will be protected against aggression. There 
was drafted at Versailles a treaty in which the 
United States and Great Britain agreed to stand 
behind France in case of attack by Germany. 
That may or may not have been a wise plan. 
A wiser solution may be for the nations of the 
world to join with France and say to France 
that no unjust attack shall be made upon her or 
upon any other nation; so giving assurance of 
protection by all nations of the world. I do 
not pretend to know what the best solution 
would be. But this I do know, that in that solu- 
tion and in that problem, the interests of the United 
States are very much involved, and we cannot 
escape them for one moment. 

We ought to be present at every conference 
and upon every occasion when these gigantic 
questions are under consideration, we ought to 

BE THERE NOT AS OBSERVERS BUT AS RESPON- 
SIBLE PARTICIPANTS. 

EUROPE STEADILY PROGRESSING 
TOWARD DEMORALIZATION 

If Germany and France follow the course of 
Austria, then Italy and the other nations of 
Europe will be dragged down. The whole situa- 
tion in Europe is today more distressing and 
more menacing than it has been at any time 
since the Armistice. Europe for eight years has 
been consuming much more than she has been 
producing. Before the war Europe as a con- 



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tinent was a creditor continent. Today she is 
very much a debtor continent. Mr. Hoover 
estimated that before the war Europe numbered 
a hundred millions more people than she could 
feed out of her current agricultural production. 
She had to buy the food with which to feed 
those hundred millions excess people by export- 
ing surplus manufactured products or by ob- 
taining interest on the money and the capital 
she had loaned to foreign countries. Today 
Europe has consumed that capital. Her pro- 
ducing power has been reduced. She is unable 
to finance loans with which to go forward. There 
is one steady progression of inflation, of un- 
balanced budgets, of hatred between countries 
and peoples, of standing armies maintained be- 
cause Governments have not the courage to 
reduce them or have not a place to put the 
people to work if they were taken out of the 
armies. There is one steady progression towards 
starvation and demoralization. 

HOW TO UNDERSTAND 
THE REAL SITUATION 

If you go to Europe, you will see many things 
going on very much as they used to. Super- 
ficial indications are very deceptive, and to 
understand the real situation, you must go 
beneath the appearances and study the figures, 
and get especially the data as to the death rate, 
the facts as to tuberculosis, the figures as to 
disease, the figures as to mal-nutrition, the 



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figures as to the insufficient calories in the gross 
amount of food available to the people. If you 
could see those figures and then carefully study 
them, you would see the unmistakable trend 
and the inevitable result. 



Ill 



WHAT IT MEANS TO US 

Now what does that all mean to us? 

First of all as to the Inter-Allied Debt. The 
truth is that the Inter- Allied Debt is an aca- 
demic question. Nature has settled it. There is 
no more possibility of that debt being paid, 
in so far as countries outside of England are con- 
cerned, than it is possible for this audience to 
sail to the planet Mars on an aeroplane. 

THE INTER-ALLIED DEBT 
AN ACADEMIC QUESTION 

Continental Europe does not take the Inter- 
Allied Debt seriously. I hear Americans say, 
"Let us use that debt as a lever to force Europe 
to do what it should to put its house in order." 
Do you think it has done any good to have the 
lever against Germany that the Allies have had 
to force Germany to do things? The Allies have 
threatened, they have bullied, they have cajoled, 
they have done everything they could to induce 
Germany to do things; but if Germany does not 



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want to or cannot do them, you can make but 
little headway. You cannot apply that kind of 
pressure against a whole people. You cannot 
enslave a nation. If the people of Europe do not 
want to or are unable to pay those debts, no 
power in the world can make them pay them. 

ENGLAND DETERMINED 
TO PAY 

With England the case is quite different. 
England can pay her debt to us, and I found 
in England this summer an attitude of mind 
such as I have never known there since 
the most critical days of the war. I remember 
being in England early in 1918, when the 
English people were united as they had never 
been united before in their determination 
that Germany should be defeated no matter 
what the cost. I found this year in England an 
attitude of mind of similar determination that 
the American debt must be paid no matter what 
the cost. The English think about that debt in 
their homes. They carry it with them to their 
business. They feel that they cannot hold up 
their heads and look the world squarely in the 
face again until that debt is paid. And I venture 
to predict that if the United States does not 
make some move toward the cancellation of 
that debt, the English are going to pay it, if it 
means sacrificing every purchase they are ac- 
customed to make in the United States, if it 
means sacrificing their comfort at home, if it 



17- 



means sacrificing every foreign security they 
hold. 

And yet I venture to think that the payment 
of that debt will be far more expensive and far 
more unpleasant to us than it will be to England. 

I won't labor the point, but no coun- 
try can pay five billion dollars or any really 
large sum with gold or money! They must 
pay it with goods. In order to pay it with 
goods they must ship here the kind of goods we 
want. If they ship the kind of goods we want, 
it means that our people will buy the goods that 
they want from England rather than buy the 
same goods from our own people. If England 
were really to pay us in large sums, or if we were 
to allow her seriously to undertake to pay the 
principal and interest on that loan in the way 
the Congressional enactment provides it shall 
be paid, it would cause disaster to our factories, 
shock to our workingmen, and disturbance to 
our whole system of industry. England will do 
her part, but we shall yet have to review what 
the whole situation means to us. 



If you have gathered any impression at all 
from what I have said, it is that the situation in 
Europe is distinctly mixed. I have been in 
Europe each year for the last four years, but 
never before have I found well-equipped, well- 
posted people more completely at sea as to the 
outlook than they are at this moment. 



18 



WHAT EUROPE LOOKS 
FOR FROM US 

Europe looks to us to bring the breath of Spring 
to that situation. Not with money — the soundest 
thinking people in Europe have come to feel 
that the time for huge loans or of man-made 
remedies for the situation is past. Loans will 
be made where they are justified. But on the 
whole, Nature has got to work out her normal 
course. By the slow processes of economy and 
production, the peoples must struggle to their 
feet. But meanwhile, Europe is in a perfect 
maelstrom of international feuds, racial hatreds, 
suspicion, disturbances of every kind. Huge 
standing armies are maintained. Peoples dis- 
trust their neighbors. It is impossible to 
establish customs regulations and international 
transportation arrangements on a sound basis, 
because nations are thinking only of themselves. 
We ask here, "Why does not Europe set her house 
in order, why doesn't she abolish her absurd 
restrictions, disband her armies, stop her ex- 
travagant government expenditure?" These 
are easy questions to ask, but they cannot be 
answered by any nation acting alone. 

A new spirit must come over this situation be- 
fore these obvious remedies can be applied. We in 
the United States must implant that new spirit. 

LOOKING FOR A FRIEND 
IN WHOM THEY TRUST 

The situation in Turkey grows out of the same 
abnormal nationalism from which the world is 



19 



suffering. The nations will have their next peace 
conference. But those nations that will gather 
there will be influenced by the same age-long 
hatreds and feuds and traditions that other peace 
conferences have been governed by. They look to 
the United States to bring to them not money alone, 
but moral influence. They recognize that we have 
here a great reservoir of moral power, of idealism, 
that we live in a country of outdoors, that we are 
free of those national hatreds and feuds and 
sources of war which have torn Europe apart for 
so many centuries. They realize that if the 
United States will only come and give its advice 
and its assistance, they will all feel that they 
have a friend whom they can trust and upon 
whom they can rely. 

So many people say, "Yes, that is all very 
well to talk about, but I am not going to go over 
to Europe or to have American soldiers go over 
to help settle the scraps of Europe." May I 
make this suggestion on that point? Many of 
you are bankers. Suppose that one of the great 
banks of New York was subjected to a run and 
financial disaster should threaten the country. 
Suppose then that J. P. Morgan and Company 
and the Federal Reserve Bank and all the other 
bankers should get together around a council 
table and decide that they would stand by that 
tottering bank. Do you not think that the very 
fact that the Federal Reserve Bank and J. P. 
Morgan and Company were in that conference 
would be sufficient to make unnecessary the 



-20 



providing of any financial assistance for that 
bank? 

To push the point further, suppose that in a 
great credit crisis, the largest bank of all should 
stand aside, and fail to give its advice, the results 
of its experience, and the strength of its position 
to saving the situation: What would you think 
of such a bank after such a moral failure? 

I feel as others feel about the United States 
sending troops to settle trouble in Europe. If 
there is any real reason, such as existed in the last 
war, for our sending troops to Europe, we will send 
them anyway. We don't need any compulsion 
to do it. But ninety-nine per cent., 999 cases in 
a thousand, of all conceivable disputes which 
might involve our sending troops to Europe will 
be settled by the very fact that we are sitting in 
conference, that we are giving our views, our 
unprejudiced and impartial opinion, as to what 
ought to be done. 

WHAT AMERICAN 
PARTICIPATION WILL DO 

The knowlege of the peoples that we are in the 
game will have profound influence. 

When we sit there with our spirit of unselfish- 
ness, with the known record we have for sym- 
pathy and generosity, most of the troubles will be 
settled without war. We can induce peoples to 
reduce their standing armies, we can induce them 
to compose their differences, we can induce them 
to look with a little more tolerance upon their 



21 



neighbors. We, and we atone, can induce them 
to do those things which if done will establish 
real peace, which will enable the nations of 
Europe to get on their feet and start producing 
and buying again, and once more resume the 
advance of civilization. 

as to "entangling 
alliances" 

We seek to avoid "entangling alliances," yet 
when George Washington wrote his farewell 
address, it took three to four weeks to cross the 
Atlantic Ocean. I crossed on a ship a few weeks 
ago in five days. You can cross in an airplane 
in less than two days. You can cross with an 
electric spark in less than a minute. I remember 
some years ago when visiting the London Stock 
Exchange, the manager of the cable company 
took me at three o'clock in the afternoon (which 
is ten o'clock A. M. in New York) and he said 
"I want you to see the first New York quota- 
tions." And in 45 seconds from the time the 
New York Stock Exchange opened, we had 
a report in London of the first transaction on the 
New York Stock Exchange. The money mar- 
kets of the world today are substantially one. 
When a stable money standard is once again 
restored, and capital shall flow freely through- 
out the world, the security markets of the world 
will operate as a veritable unit. With the tele- 
phone, the telegraph, the wireless, and all the 
means of communication the world has devel- 



22 



oped, we are no longer separated from the rest 
of the world as we used to be. 

The Atlantic Ocean from an economic and 
commercial standpoint is today no wider than 
the Delaware River. We are a part of the world. 
We are entangled already with the whole world. 
If there is a famine in India, it affects the sale of 
cotton from the states of Georgia and Alabama. 
If there is distress in Russia, it means that tea 
cannot be bought in Ceylon, and Ceylon cannot 
buy the wheat she needs from this country. 



IV 



THE WORLD NEEDS THE 
UNITED STATES 

Our people need the markets of the world, 
and the markets of the world need us. The whole 
world needs peace, it needs contentment, it 
needs the will to peace, and it needs trust among 
the nations. The world needs the United States. 

In a time so critical as this, when the whole 
future of civilization, it may be, hangs in the 
balance, it is time for the United States to re- 
consider very seriously where it shall stand. It 
is unthinkable that we should long maintain our 
present policy of isolation. Pride, self-interest, 
duty — all summon us to a new point of view, 
and a new policy in keeping with our great 
traditions. It is time, I believe, for us to take 



-23- 



the position that in some form or other, in some 
form that will preserve our national traditions 
and satisfy our national aspirations, which will 
not involve us in un-American activities, in 
some form or other we as a people shall sit 
once more around the council table of the nations 
and bear our share of the burdens of the world. 

THE TIME FOR 
DRIFTING IS PAST 

We can trifle no longer. If we wait too long, 
it may be too late. Civilization is on fire, and 
yet we, a great Christian people, sit unmoved. 
We blame the other fellow for it all. 

We are the big brother of the nations. We 
are indeed the "land of hope and glory," but 
we are not doing our part. We stand up in 
church and pray the Lord's Prayer, " Thy King- 
dom Come on Earth as it is in Heaven!" Do 
we mean what we say, or do we refer only to the 
United States? 

Is it not time to drop the petty politics of 
national egotism and rise to the height of the 
great argument? Can we as a people continue 
to stand aside and aloof? There isn't a particle 
of doubt that when America does see the situa- 
tion as it is, she will rise in the greatness of her 
idealism and her magnanimity, and express her 
real self in sympathy and co-operation with a 
broken world. God speed the moment of that 
great awakening! 



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